Park Lands For Sale: Can the National Park Service Afford Them?

America's national park system is interwoven with more than 4 million acres of private lands, nearly half of which the National Park Service would love to own, but can't afford. Does Congress, or the American people, care?

Ron Tipton, NPCA's senior vice president for programs, says the problem is that Congress, when it creates a unit of the national park system, directs the Park Service to buy up all the land necessary for that unit but doesn't always provide all the money to do so.

"The consequence is we have a lot of land and a lot of important buildings and cultural features that are not owned or protected by the National Park Service and that are vulnerable to be subdivided or developed or sold and used in ways that are inappropriate for a national park," he told reporters during a conference call. "This has been exacerbated by the fact that the money has declined for this purpose. Over the last six fiscal years, the appropriation to the National Park Service for land acquisition has gone from $130 million down to about $34 million in 2007 and then, in this current fiscal year, $44 million."

Of course, what's not presented in this report are the interests of inholders. Some families owned parcels before -- in some cases long before -- the park that now surrounds them was created. Should they be evicted? The Isle Royale Families and Friends Association exists specifically to represent the rights and views of inholders in Isle Royale National Park, inholders who are not looking to develop resorts but simply want to continue to live on the island.

But then there are others who look to develop inholdings beyond a homestead, according to NPCA.

Can the Park Service afford to make these desired purchases? It should be able to. The federal Land and Water Conservation Fund was created in 1964 specifically to acquire and develop "public outdoor recreation areas and facilities." Part of the program provides grants to states to purchase lands, while another part is intended to pay for "land in new forests, parks, wildlife refuges and other recreation areas owned by the national government."

But administrations and Congress don't always adequately appropriate funds for the land-management agencies to carry out their end of the deal.

"The Park Service has not been getting very much money from this fund," said Mr. Tipton. "Our proposal is that as we advance toward the centennial of the national park system in 2016 that we ought to use that fund. We need about $100 million, $150 million a year, over a period of five or six years and we can actually purchase most of the 1.8 million acres that the Park Service would like to buy and own within the national park system between now and that centennial.

"That's something that ought to be important to the American public and should be a priority for this Congress, and the next Congress, and the next administration, whoever that may be," he said.

Here's a look at some of the problems NPCA sees:

* At Acadia National Park, while Friends of Acadia last fall stepped forward to see that private land on Acadia Mountain wasn't developed, there remains about 140 inholdings within the park that would require about $40 million for the Park Service to purchase;

* At Big Thicket National Preserve, there are nearly 3,000 acres that would take $4.75 million to purchase. The land contains rare and endangered species and would provide visitors with opportunities to canoe, preserve wildlife habitat, and protect water quality;

* In Congaree National Park nearly 1,900 private acres, the so-called Riverstone tract, is viewed as a key connector between the core of the park to the west and the Bates Fork tract, which the Park Service bought in 2005. This linkage, estimated to cost the NPS $5.9 million to acquire, would tie the national park to the Upper Santee Swamp Natural Area;

* On the northwestern corner of Mount Rainier National Park there are about 800 acres that the Park Service was given permission in 2004 by Congress and President Bush to acquire, and yet the $4.5 million or so necessary to close the deal hasn't been appropriated. This acreage would enable the Park Service to realign the Carbon River Road so it's not washed out by flooding on a regular basis, as it is nowadays;

* In Tennessee the Obed Wild and Scenic River shows 1,050 acres of inholdings within its boundaries. There are willing sellers to 750 of those acres, for about $3 million. "But after three decades of waiting, some owners are losing hope and patience. Developers are standing by to pick up the property, and they have no shortage of clients eagerly awaiting the chance to buy a house with a view," says NPCA.

For a description of more inholdings across the park system, check out NPCA's report.

At the Park Service, officials realize the problem they have with private lands within units of the national park system, but can do little under the current funding scenario.

"The 1.8 million acres of private inholdings were identified as the most critical private land needed to preserve and protect in the boundaries of units of the national park system. This land was identified in the parks' General Management Plans and/or Land Protection Plans," said the agency's Land Office. "These lands, such as at Richmond National Battlefield Park, Valley Forge National Historical Park, or Santa Monica Mountains National Recreational Area, lie within the path of urban development and if not acquired will be lost forever.

"The mission of the National Park Service is two-prong," the Land Office continued, "to provide for visitor services and the protection of the resources for future generations. Recently, funding for the protection of resources has dropped significantly. The service continues to struggle to balances these two goals with declining resources."

Will the Park Service fare better under the current Democratically controlled Congress? Will the next administration, Republican or Democratic, be more generous to the Park Service? With the country's current fiscal outlook bleak in light of not just the domestic economy but the war in Iraq, health and welfare needs, and the need to shore-up Social Security and Medicare, there's no clear or easy answer to those questions, only hope.

"The Democratic Congress is more sympathetic to federal land acquisition than the Republican Congress was before them, and you can see that in this past year the Democratic Congress, if you will, added $22 million to the appropriations request for Fiscal Year 2008. (But) that only brought it up to $44 million," said Mr. Tipton. "They're really hamstrung by very tight budget ceilings and by the fact that the Bush administration threatened to veto a series of appropriation bills for everything except Homeland Security and Defense last year. And because of that, it really limited how far the Democrats could go in adding money to programs like the Land and Water Conservation Fund.

"All three presidential candidates, at one level or another, are supporters of the national park system, and I think all of them would support more money for land acquisition for the national parks," he said.

Too, there is some support in Congress, as evidenced earlier this week by the bipartisan introduction of legislation to create the National Park Centennial Fund, a measure that calls for upwards of $1 billion in additional federal funds for the Park Service by its centennial in 2016. As written, the legislation would allow some of that money to be used for land acquisition.

Beyond that, there's always private philanthropy and friends groups engineering the purchase of lands that could then be turned over to the parks. However, NPCA believes such efforts should only complement, not supplant, acquisitions paid for through the Land and Water Conservation Fund.

"We ... are very open to and appreciate private donations. The Conservation Fund, the national organization that conserves recreation lands and lands with important conservation values, often purchases properties and donates them to the National Park Service," said Mr. Tipton. "Individuals have done that. The Rockefeller family, over the decades, has donated land that it bought for parks like Acadia, Grand Teton, Virgin Islands National Park. Many other park units across the country.

"We've been talking to some philanthropists who would like to do that as part of the centennial. But I think in the end that's going to supplement what is already a legitimate public source of money, the Land and Water Conservation Fund. But yes, there's certainly a place for private donations."

How important is land acquisition for the national park system? After all, the agency has a maintenance backlog of more than $8.5 billion and faces staffing problems in more than a few parks. Do those problems overshadow inholdings?

"Well, it isn’t as simple as saying acquiring private inholdings is more or less important than the maintenance backlog or fully staffing the parks," says Bill Wade of the Coalition of National Park Service Retirees.. "The problem is that, like those other 'pots of money,' land-acquisition funding has been inadequate to take care of individual very high-priority situations, such as the one at Valley Forge and the recent situation at Zion.

"Failure to acquire these parcels when (or before) some use on them becomes an impact, rather than the threat of an impact, is the issue," went on Mr. Wade. "The same argument is made about inadequate funding for maintenance or staffing and each has its own set of priorities. While you can, and need to, consider priorities among all the needs, you can’t draw the line between the categories of needs and say one is more important than the other."

That said, the coalition believes that "acquisition of parcels of privately-owned land in, or adjacent to, the boundaries of national parks, identified by the NPS as critical to management of the parks, is important and deserves adequate funding by the Congress to meet the mission of the National Park Service," he said.

Back at NPCA, Mr. Tipton agreed that it shouldn't be an "either or" situation.

"Clearly, we and others have been pushing hard for more money for park operations as well as for the maintenance and construction backlog, and to some extent we've succeeded in getting significant new money for park management, and the parks are benefiting from that as are their visitors," responded Mr. Tipton. "We see this need, though, land acquisition, as a very high priority. That's why we did this report over a period of six or seven months.

"We're putting this out there as one of the priorities for the centennial, for the national park system and the National Park Service, which is eight years way. We'd really like to see the 1.8 million acres that the Park Service has identified that needs to be acquired and protected essentially completed. Virtually all of that land should be in public ownership by 2016."

Comments

The Pitcock Rosillos Ranch that borders Big Bend National Park has been for sale for quite some time now. That piece of land would be wonderful for the park to acquire. Unfortunately it is priced out of their budget (out of anyones budget realistically). Its too bad.

Your mention of the Isle Royale Families and Friends Association is interesting but the Isle Royale situation, like the Apostle Islands situation you've written about previously, is not about inholders. In both parks, landowners were fully compensated for the lands they sold to the NPS (albeit, many were unwilling sellers). Owners were generally given the choice of an outright sale, or a lease-back arrangement where the value of the lease (prorated for a fixed number of years or for the life of the owner, if that was the choice) was subtracted up front from the sales price. So while it's understandable that these folks want to retain connections with these parks, what's often lost in the discussion is that the taxpayers purchased these properties long ago, that these folks have had the opportunity to live in national parks for decades without paying taxes (or the current values of the leases), they received fair compensation for their property, and that they were parties to contracts or legal agreements spelling out these terms. There are no surprises here and there are no rights that are being violated, except perhaps yours and mine as taxpayers when the NPS or politicians cave in to the supposed injustices being perpetrated on these poor, innocent people.

I'm sure I wouldn't have been thrilled to have been forced to sell my land to create a national park. But many people did so willingly, recognizing that the public interest sometimes outweighs private interest, even when it is their own.

Time heals many wounds. But the Isle Royale group's web site is revealing. They express interest in being a partner to the NPS... but only after repeating a litany of now-ancient (even if sometimes legitimate) grievances about the way their lands were acquired, and only if the NPS breaks its side of the contracts and agreements. I don't see any of the "families and friends" offering to repay the taxpayers (with interest) the money they (or more likely their parents) received from the NPS for the property so long ago. They cite a report urging the NPS to "conserve the irreplaceable connections that ancestral…people have with" the parks but fail to reveal that "ancestral people" in that same report was never intended to mean those European Americans who owned the land just before the parks were created. Next thing, we should expect to hear that the IRFFA want to have themselves declared "traditional peoples" just as has been attempted at Cape Cod. And then the Apostle Islands group will try to do the same.

So... inholdings are a great concern, but a deal is a deal and if the government is expected to uphold its contracts, so should those that sell to it.

Just take a look at a photo in the Civil War Preservation Trust's report on endangered battlefields that Kurt wrote about earlier...it's for sale sign that exclaims in giant letters "HISTORIC BATTLEFIELD FOR SALE"

Your headline is misleading. It's not "Park" lands that are for sale. It's private lands that the NPS would like to buy.

That said, surely with the number of earmarks for 'bridges to nowhere' and "Woodstock Museums" and teapot museums, somewhere there should be money for additions to the National Parks. There may be more creative solutions than a simple purchase. The federal government could give owners exemptions from taxes (income or estate) in lieu of cash. Or perhaps land swaps with other federally owned land.

Ah, but some people (not me) consider earmarking funds for park lands to be just as bad as "bridges to nowhere." Adding more funds to the Land and Water Conservation Fund would be a big step in the right direction. And the headline is correct. Many of these lands are for sale to whomever can pay the most.

The integrity of the nature in these parks, and the preservation of lands of national historical value, should be a priority. These are factors, along with other laws that are still in place, that distinguish us from ecological wastelands such as mainland China and eastern Europe (as misused during the Soviet era).

If as is being stated, those private landowners were previously compensated, perhaps an impartial board should consider whether those deals were reasonable under federal law, and what the rights of these private "owners" are, if any.

The fact that the National Parks Service is not receiving the funding ($190 million yearly?!) from oil drilling fees, is a crime, and the federal officials behind this should be arrested and prosecuted for malfeasance. If it goes as far as the president, he should be impeached for violation of the federal trust. This is the true patriotism. Wolves in sheeps clothing who are trying to privatize and monetize every square inch of our heritage, are not patriots and on the contrary if there are laws or contracts being broken should be relieved of their offices and if appropriate should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.